Characters Welcomed.

In the summer of 2008, the USA Network asked eleven photographers to “capture the character of America.” You may have seen the commercials for The Character Project on television. I always thought I saw a familiar face at work behind a large format 4x5 camera, and sure enough, it was Dawoud Bey, a past artist-in-residence and a long time friend of the Addison. Participants also include Jeff Dunas, Mary Ellen Mark, Eric Ogden, and Sylvia Palchy, among others, who documented their subjects from nearly every corner of our country—Alaska, Los Angeles, Chicago, Michigan, New York, Texas, and Washington. From organic farmers in the Northwest to people living along Highway 50, we witness glimpses of ourselves in our fellow citizens. The Character Project will be exhibited in various cities across the United States this spring.

I found myself wondering—how does the Addison’s collection, an exclusively American one, “capture the character of America?” I decided to stretch this idea beyond the medium of photography and time by featuring both historic and contemporary representations. I hope you will enjoy the Addison’s select cast of “characters.”

Alvin Langdon Coburn, III Mark Twain, 1908, 1905, photogravure	Henry Inman, News Boy, 1841, oil on canvas, museum purchase
Frederick Hayes, Untitled (Young Man), 2000, charcoal on paper, Purchased as the gift of Miriam M. and Charles O. Wood, III	David McGee, Corporate Girl / Side B, 1997, oil on canvas, partial gift of John Axelrod (PA 1964) and museum purchase
Wendy Ewald, Q from A Girl's Alphabet, 2002, digital print, gift of Robin Gates	Gaston Lachaise, Seated Woman, 1927, bronze, gift of The Lachaise Foundation, Boston, MA
Type A, Cheer (Slam), 2006, chromogenic print, gift of the artists	Winslow Homer, Hon. Abraham Lincoln, Born in Kentucky, February 12, 1809., 1860, wood engraving, purchased as the gift of Warren P. Snyder (PA 1936)
Michael de Lisio, Oscar Wilde in America, ca. 1882, 1968, bronze, gift of Sanford Schwartz	Dawoud Bey, A Young Woman Between Carrolburg Place and Half Street, Washington, D.C., 1989, gelatin silver print, museum purchase
Sally Mann, The New Mothers, 1989, gelatin silver print, museum purchase	Sal Lopes, Boy with Sign "Does Anyone Know", Nov. 1983, cibachrome print, gift of the artist

Posted by Jaime DeSimone, Charles H. Sawyer Curatorial Fellow

Coming of Age Closing in Fort Lauderdale March 23

Time is short for viewing our travelling exhibition Coming of Age: American Art, 1850s to 1950s at the Museum of Art-Fort Lauderdale. The show closes there next Monday, March 23rd before it travels to the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, opening there May 28th. This is not a simple venue change: we are adding three new objects to the show to replace two others that we have promised to lend to exhibitions organized by other institutions.

The three objects joining Coming of Age are Winslow Homer's Kissing the Moon, Mary Cassatt's Little Boy in Blue (No. 2) (see left), both last seen in the Addison's Then and Now exhibition, and, one of the Addison's more important recent acquisitions, Barnett Newman's Argos. One of the objects they are replacing is Winslow Homer's The West Wind, which will be travelling to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts to take part in their exhibition Expanding Horizons: Painting and Photography of American and Canadian Landscapes 1860-1918 opening there June 18th. The other object leaving Coming of Age is Georgia O'Keeffe's Wave, Night, which will be travelling to the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute to take part in their exhibition Dove/O'Keeffe: Circles of Influence opening there June 7th.

We encourage you to see Coming of Age at the venue nearest you and to visit our objects being loaned to other institutions. Soon, though, you'll be able to see our works back up on our own walls when the Addison Gallery reopens to the public next spring.


James M. Sousa
Associate Registrar for Collections and Archives

Missing the Addison? Join us for the final Close Encounter

Still missing the Addison? Join us!!

Curator of Photography Allison Kemmerer will be hosting:

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS:
Photographs of the West

Thursday, March 19, 2009
11:00 A.M. to 12:00 P.M.
School Room (third floor), Abbot Hall
Abbot Campus
School Street, Andover

Allison’s talk is the last of a three-part series of intimate visits with treasures from the collection hosted by the Addison’s curators.